The Hudsucker Proxy

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) is set in 1958. The head of a vast corporation kills himself by jumping from the boardroom table. To drive the share price down, the board decides to install an idiot from the mailroom as president. Norville Barnes shows them the circle he carries on a scrap of paper: the hula hoop. The screenplay is among the Coens' earliest work. They began writing it with Sam Raimi in 1981 and finished in 1985, so the film arrived nine years after the script. Raimi also directed second unit and shot the hula hoop sequence and the opening suicide. Joel Silver took the script to Warner Bros. He gave the Coens complete artistic control, and despite concerns from test screenings they were able to refuse the studio's suggestions for reshoots. The production design draws on fascist architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright, Art Deco and Terry Gilliam's Brazil. The narrative model is the Preston Sturges and Frank Capra comedies of the thirties and forties. It was a heavy commercial failure: 11.3 million dollars worldwide against a 25 million budget, and just 2.8 million in the United States and Canada. It runs 111 minutes. Good for: formal spectacle, homage to classic Hollywood comedy, and the Coen brothers. Less good for: the common criticism is fair; it is all surface with no emotional centre. Tim Robbins's character never changes, and the fast newspaper patter reads as imitation.